Blackrock Caverns

Another dungeon located in Blackrock Mountains, Blackrock Caverns is a complex of tunnels created by Deathwing. It connects the mountain home of the Dark Iron dwarves with the Twilight Highlands, north-west of the Wetlands. It is populated by members of the Twilight Hammer and elementals. This is one of the first dungeons players can queue for in Cataclysm and chain-runs grant a ton of experience from 80-82. (Characters who complete the main dungeon quest series earn a fun deep-dive helmet for the duration of the instance.) Many players access the dungeon from This Can Only Mean One Thing..., taking Finkle's Mole Machine to the mountain.

From the Blizzard Community site:"Rumors suggest that Deathwing himself carved out the subterranean labyrinth that allows the Twilight's Hammer to secretly transport elementals from the majestic Mount Hyjal to Blackrock Mountain. A vital hub of this shadow network is Blackrock Caverns, site of the cult's blistering forge and some of its most heinous experiments, including the transformation of cultists into twilight dragonkin.

In the bowels of Blackrock Mountain, beneath the more traversed parts of the mountain's spire, the Twilight's Hammer puts this hope into practice. Surrounded by boiling spouts of magma and burning rock - as well as the dangerous elementals that call Blackrock home - the cult will reforge their devoted in the image of the world they work to destroy."

Encounters

Rom'ogg Bonecrusher – One of the rare "missing link" ogres on Outland, Rom'ogg Bonecrusher piqued the Twilight's Hammer Cult's interest with his merciless treatment of the ogres. He now lords over the Chamber of Incineration, sating his hunger for inflicting torment on others.

Karsh Steelbender – The enormous drakonid Karsh Steelbender toils in the Twilight Forge, shaping weapons of war out of rare quicksilver. Although Karsh's works are nearly unbreakable under normal circumstances, at high temperatures they become as brittle as rusted iron.

Beauty – Beauty's past is a tale as old as time, a song as old as rhyme. After Beauty's mate, Beast, was slain by heroes in Blackrock Spire, the hound and its four remaining pups joined forces with the Twilight's Hammer, intent on punishing the creatures who killed its mate.

Ascendant Lord Obsidius – For his unyielding devotion and penchant for cruelty, the powerful shaman Dessirik the Depraved was gifted with ascension: a dark ritual that infused him with elemental powers, transforming him into a monstrosity known as Ascendant Lord Obsidius.

Music

Related

Comments

Comment by bahamute

For those looking for the entrance to Blackrock Caverns (or more likely, where to pick up your corpse), enter Blackrock Mountain then head towards the hallway that leads to Blackrock Spire, on the east side (should find a summoning stone there that labels the entrance as BRS). Go through the hallway a bit and turn right at the first junction, then head straight on into Blackrock Caverns.

Comment by geekgymnast

I rofled at Beauty. In UBRS, there is a core hound boss named The Beast.

Comment by cerridwena

To get here you need to speak to Finkle Einhorn in Mt. Hyjal - he will have a quest "This can only mean one thing..." (currently, no information is available on wowhead, so I cannot link to them) where you will use his mole teleporter to take to you the caverns. Once there, you go inside the instance portal and he will be immediately on your left.

He then gives "To the Chamber of Incineration" to kill Rom'ogg Bonecrusher.

-----

For horde, Raz is standing next to Finkle in Mt. Hyjal - so I imagine the questline is very similar, you just have a different contact.

Comment by Korinai

Right when you pull the boss, 3 beams will begin to channel on the adds, and will give them a stacking buff that builds up pretty fast, and caps at 100. Now, the adds aren’t active right now, but when the stack reaches 100, they’ll turn into Twilight Draconids. As you probably saw from the trash, the Draconids hit VERY hard, so you don’t want one to ever reach 100 stacks.

To do this, all you have to do is stand in the beams pathway. Instead of the adds gaining stacks, you’ll get them. Preferably you’ll want ranged DPS to stand in the beams, but if you don’t have any, you can put some melee DPS in a beam and even a healer if you have to.

The people standing in the beams need to watch their debuffs closely, and sidestep out of the beam when their debuff reaches about 80-90 stacks. It will only take a couple of seconds for the debuff to run off, and then you need to get back in your beam again ASAP to prevent the adds from getting stacks.

Corla also has a permanent aura (“Aura of Acceleration”) that increases the movement and attack speeds of the adds by 50% and 20% respectively. This basically is in place so you can’t just ignore the beams and kite the adds.

The last ability she has is “Dark Command” which is a fear with a 25,000 DoT over 3 seconds. This is fairly miniscule, but if your healer gets feared, your tank may need to use a defensive cooldown depending on his/her gear.

Comment by kazumi

If you're entering Blackrock Mountain from Burning Steppes, make a right and it's the next entryway on your right. Enter it and follow the hallway until you see the bonfire and the broken crates, after the bonfire, make a right and you'll see the dungeon entrance in front of you.

Comment by Gryphon

The NPC that gives the Cataclysm quest to discover entrance of Blackrock Caverns, is to be found in Mount Hyal, west to Nordrassil at the Circle of Cinders (where your third quest will take you, see screenshots).

You can take his wormhole (left of them) after taking the quest and it will take you to BRC dungeon.

After this you can queue for the Blackrock Caverns in LFD!

Comment by Blindo

With a high level of archaeology, a player can activate a zone wide buff before the 2nd room with1xDwarf Rune Stone to grant -5% damage taken for the duration of that lockout.

Comment by ceodoc

Greetings

69,800.00 xp per quest seems very high, is this the figure left over from the Beta, where they wanted peeps to hit higher lvls quicker, or can we assume that will be live data?

Comment by Mcfierce

Comment by Ilikegold

As of 4.0.3a you can discover the entrance to the instance and therefore queue in LFD finder on dec. 7th

Comment by Badaccus

The weird thing is it requires lvl 80 to enter, but on normal drops lvl 78 iLvl 279 gear? (better than ICC25HC-gear) Tho as hard as this place looks from beta-movies i wouldn't want to go in here as 78 with green/blue gear. That would probably be painful.

Have one player on each beam (tank can take one), get ~80 stacks, move out, let the add take 80 stacks (enough time to clear yours), move back in, repeat...Interrupt dark commandHave one player ready to take a beam incase of dark command fear

Achiev for letting ALL adds evolve & then kill them

Karsh Steelbender

Move him in & out of fire, while stacking as little as possible of the buff everytime(1 is perfect, 2-3 is fine, 4+ is bad), but DO NOT let it fall offWhen you have to let it fall off, adds spawn, just kill them, they leave fire aoe on ground which also works as armor burn

Achiev for getting burn to stack to 15 times, just be careful about too fast stacking to avoid crazy aoe dmg

Beauty

CC as many of the dogs as you can, if you have 3 reliable controls in group, keep them controlled for the whole fight, just dont kill them (boss enrages)Tremor totem to counter fear if possible

Comment by oink

HEROIC MODEI tried to make these one-line-copy-pasteable so you can use them ingame :)

Rom'ogg BonecrusherClear the adds in the front half of room before the fight. Move out of the dust clouds. Adds spawn in the dust clouds, have the tank pick them up. When he puts the group in Chains of Woe, dps down the chains and then get away from the boss before he does his AOE cleave.

Corla, Herald of TwilightHave a ranged DPS stand in each of the beams. When you get 80 stacks of the debuff, move out of the beam until it falls off, and then get back in for 80 stacks. Rinse and repeat. Make sure to interrupt when she starts casting Dark Command (her fear ability).

Karsh SteelbenderHave the tank dip him in the lavafall for 1-2 stacks, pull him out for 4-5 seconds, dip him in for 1-2 more stacks, rinse and repeat. The trick is to never let the debuff fall off or he spawns adds. He cleaves so stay behind him.

BeautyCC as many of the 3 pups as you can for the whole fight, kill the ones you can't, then kill Beauty. Ignore Runty (small pup behind Beauty), he doesn't hurt and if you kill him Beauty enrages. Tremor totem/fear ward is helpful.

Ascendant Lord ObsidiusTank the boss where he stands and have someone kite the three adds in a circle away from the boss (behind the group is a good place). The boss will occasionally swap places with one of the adds, have the tank go get him and bring him back to where he was.

Comment by hillazon

Normal blue drops need to be updated in database. They are all ilevel 300+ items now.

Comment by hillazon

Normal blue drops need to be updated in database. They are all ilevel 300+ items now.

Comment by Beave

Thanks and confirmed. It is there.

Comment by Jipsi

To find this dungeon so that you can use the LFG tool, travel to 42.7, 28.2 in Mount Hyjal (just east of Lake Edunel) and pickup This Can Only Mean One Thing... from Finkle Einhorn. A mole machine will be usable about 20 feet east from where you pickup this quest at. Click it and teleport to the dungeon entrance, thus discovering it and allowing you to que for dungeon.

P.S. The quest turn in is inside the instance

Comment by Skelufteay

Karsh Steelbender (Heroic)

First, clear whole room for mobility (may also want to consider clearing adds in the tunnel)

Easiest way to do this we have found is to stack him to 4-5 and dps him until it falls off. Once the armor is 99% again, fire shoots up from grates and adds spawn. Have the ranged dps pull all adds but 1 out to the outside ring, and keep 1 add inside. kill all adds, and use the 1 add on the inside ring to melt his armor.

The armor can be refreshed before it falls off, and that is how you get to 15 stacks. Do not try to go more than 3-4 stacks at one go or the healer will not be able to keep up. If you continuously refresh the armor before it falls off, the fire will not shoot up and no additional adds will be spawned.

The single pool of fire on the inner ring helps because the tank does not need to take fire damage, (like you would using the center column) and can instead run around the patch of fire while Karsh has to walk through it for 1-2 stacks. I found that when the armor is halfway from falling off, to start running around the pool of fire and you will get another stack in time.

Take note that each stack of fire does increase the aoe damage, as well as Karshes melee swing, but the aoe only goes off every time he gets 1 additional stack.

Beauty (Heroic)

All of her pups will come with her, and cannot be pulled individually like in normal. If you kill runty, Beauty will get a buff of (200-500% more damage, I cannot remember the exact number) and can 2 shot a tank.

Best thing to do if you have 2 sheep/hex people is CC 2 pups, and kill the middle one. Once that one is dead you can either have one person kite runty, freeze trap him, or kill 2 pups and then sheep/hex runty. You should only need to refresh the sheep/hex once.

All of the pups will have a front breath cone, as well as drop pools of fire like the adds in Karsh Steelbender.

Beauty will cause an 8 second fear 3-4 times during the fight. Other than that she is relatively easy to down.

Comment by BurnHunter

It is South west of wet lands not north west

Comment by Theus

I've only been to this dungeon twice, both times as healer, yet even without much Cataclysm experience can say that this dungeon is not difficult. Relatively small amount of trash groups; boss encounters simple with only minor glitches, mostly tank and spank fights.

Good to remember what's what in pp! :)

Comment by SylvanElf

How come to required level on most of the drops is 78, yet the dungeon is 80 to enter...? Also, I could SWEAR I read here that it was 78 to enter originally.

Comment by Vereesa

I can confirm that on the 30th January 2011, I was able to enter the normal version of this instance on my level 78 Priest.

Comment by SylvanElf

SCORE! Thanks Vereesa! Can you Queue using LFD as well?

Comment by SylvanElf

Well, according to further digging, once you do the breadcrumb quest in Mount Hyjal, and use the portal to get to the instance entry, you can Queue up after.

By Truelove (10) on 10/27/2010 (Patch 4.0.1)The NPC that gives the Cataclysm quest to discover entrance of Blackrock Caverns, is to be found in Mount Hyal, west to Nordrassil at the Circle of Cinders (where your third quest will take you, see screenshots).

You can take his wormhole (left of them) after taking the quest and it will take you to BRC dungeon.

After this you can queue for the Blackrock Caverns in LFD!

Though on further, FURTHER reading, that Quest requires level 80... weird

Comment by mouseno4

There is currently a bug with Raz and the huge drakonids that, if you use a speed boosting mechanic to get ahead of Raz, his mechanic will fail and the drakonids will remain alive. Since these mobs hit for a ton, not having Raz wipe them all out means, you have to have a really super group to be able to take them all on at once.

Please rate me up if you think this information has value.

Comment by crashrouge

Question:

If you die while running a dungeon on this place, what or which is the quickest way to get back inside the dungeon?

When you log back in in-spirit, you're inside a tomb of some sort. Which would be the quickest way out being there's 2 exits and many different directions you can travel thru'.

I appreciate any help given here.

Thank You!

Comment by mclaren1141

There is a video that shows how to find the entrance to Blackrock Caverns and how to get back in if you die! I hope it helps. :)

Comment by hideki13

Stupid question, but I have to make it: do you have to own the Cataclysm expansion to enter this?

Comment by rawryer

Soloable on normal as a fury warrior with mostly dragon soul gear. Very close call on 2nd and last boss though. Tank the adds and nuke the chick. Last boss decrease your healing by 96% because of the adds aggro, other than that it's pretty straight forward.

Comment by togahsisoka

Will be attempting solo today at level 82 with as much MoP gear as I can beg/steal/borrow on a blood DK. I would think normal would be a semi-faceroll at worst and the XP would therefore be glorious.

Comment by Schnoodledorfer

For those using TomTom,/way Burning 27.4 27.9 Entrance/way Burning 24.3 29.9 Meeting StoneIf you enter them in this order, the TomTom arrow will lead you past the Meeting Stone (on the road passing through the mountain) right to the entrance. The coordinates are for the Burning Steppes map.

Comment by Aviatrixx

Blackrock Caverns is great for getting gear and experience. Watch out for the second boss, as he takes very little damage unless you put him in the lava, and when you do, damage is dealt to everyone nearby.

Comment by AudibleKnight

Just soloed Heroic Blackrock Caverns on my 523 (LFR) Paladin. I ran through this dungeon entirely on Retribution.

1. Entrance: This dungeon is found in Blackrock Mountains, the hub where Molten Core, BWL, BRS etc can be found. Find the Meeting Stone on the outside ring of the giant hub, with a gateway nearby. Walk through, and just past some barracks is a pathway to the right that leads to this dungeon.

2. Entered the dungeon and for some reason had a diving helm equipped. It might have been related to the instance quest chain I picked up.3. Rom'ogg Bonecrusher: Easy Tank and Spank. Didn't pop my CDs as didn't think he was a boss at first. He cast some chains spell on me, which supposedly you can target and kill the chains in order to run away and avoid an AOE, but I just cluelessly continued to beat on him until he died. After killing him Raz some friendly NPC cleared most of the room and path onwards.4. You'll come across several Evolved Twilight Zealot during the dungeon. They use an ability called Gravity Strike which takes a large chunk of your life and is completely unavoidable as far as I know.5. Corla, Herald of Twilight: Wiped 3 times on this boss. Supposedly with a group you're supposed to have various party members blocking the streams from the dragon up above to avoid the the adds from transforming into angry beasts which will beat you down.

First time I tried to DPS her as quickly as I could, nope, 1-shot when they transformed. Second tried to pull her away slowly up the ramp, but they teleport to Corla and 1-shot me again. Third time, I tried to pull her around a corner thinking that maybe if I was out of their LOS they wouldn't kill me. Nope, 1-shot again.

What eventually worked was to hit corla with a Judgement and then high tail it out of there with a Speed of Light. She caught up, and then the adds teleported in while I was in the rocky hallway before her room. Popped my divine protection and then later I bubbled. They eventually disengaged when I was near death just before the bridge after the rocky hallway leaving Corla alone. Beat her down with no problems after that.6. After Corla, there was a bridge with numerous Evolved Twilight Zealot . As I approached, expecting lots of Gravity Strikes, Raz came in and killed them all.7. Karsh Steelbender: I simply DPSed him down popping CDs, and occassionally giving him a molten lava bath by having him walk through it pouring from the center of the room. No problems.8. Beauty: I read that I was supposed to kill the adds before focusing on her, so I used a bunch of Divine Storms to AOE them down. Beauty ended up dropping before the adds, and they disappeared shortly afterward. Would have been better to just focus on Beauty and kill her that much faster while ignoring the fire breath from the adds that made my GTFO addon screech during the entire fight.9. Ascendant Lord Obsidius: Raz came in and killed all but 3 of the adds as I approached. Supposedly you had to kite the adds as they cast a debuff that will reduce healing. I simply focused on the boss, refocusing on him as he teleports and replaces one of the adds occasionally. He dropped and I never noticed my health drop low enough to need healing so no problem.

Since I died a handful of times, You appear in the center of the Blackrock Mountain hub. You have to take one of the ramps up and then cross the chasm on the chain to return back to the meeting stone and barricades to find the entrance to the instance again.

Comment by Yogilaw

Some good comments on here.

Just to re-iterate the point made by some; regardless of how well geared you are (& of course we all like to brag about how we soloed a dungeon) you must not just charge about thinking you're bullet (or anything else) proof. Heroic level is a tough fight even with 500+ilvl.Raz is there to help you after each boss is killed so use him. First ogre is pretty easy take down if you can self heal. Second boss will have a number of protection mobs that you need to avoid & those guarding the corridor leading to her need special attention. Try not to AOE more than 2 at a time, they have a cast that hits for a ton of health.After this, just let Raz do his thing. But be prepared for some expense with the mender. A level 90 will get hit for about 70g for dying at the hands of a mob in here.

Comment by Kman4225

I found that the Head Crack of the Mad Prisoner was debilitating after the squish as it reduced stamina by a whopping 500 the same as before the squish. which reduced the tank's health to 700 ish which made the beginning trash impossible in the normal version in a random dungeon group.

Comment by Schnoodledorfer

At some point Wowhead added the subzone maps, so now it has maps which do a good job of showing how to get to the entrance.

There are two ways of getting to the entrance from inside Blackrock Mountain. The shortest way is to begin inside the mountain on the east side of the ring that goes around the center of the mountain. That way in is shown on this map. Note that it's easy to miss the place where you need to turn right because some rubble and NPCs may distract you.

Another route can be used if you fly through the doorway near the entrance to LBRS and UBRS. In that case, you start out on a upper level as shown on this map. Go to where the dot is. You will transition to the first map by going down a ramp there. I also put a dot at the same place on the lower map to show where you will come out on it.

Comment by GamingTV

Comment by Goodwinn

The MapID of Blackrock Caverns is 753. This is used for any WoW API function that requires a MapID.

For example, to set your current map to Blackrock Caverns you can type:

/run SetMapByID(753)

Comment by Goodwinn

If you have 425+ Archaeology skill you can click on the Stone Tablet located at 42.0, 69.6 in Blackrock Caverns. This will start the quest Dark Iron Contingency Plan which allows you to exchange a Dwarf Rune Stone for a zone-wide buff called Dark Iron Contingency Plan which reduces your elemental damage taken by 5% while in the dungeon. This buff is applied to all party members and will persist through death. New players joining a dungeon in-progress will also receive the buff if it was activated before they got there.